Glad to know that you blokes still see yourselves as Aussies :-D You might have to move to the mainland if this global warming thingee takes off and floods the little place out.. wot! no Bass Straight and no Tassie to beat in the Sheffield Shield, strike me pink :-P

Mick

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On the outer Barcoo where the churches are few, And men of religion are scanty,On a road never cross'd 'cept by folk that are lost, One Michael Magee had a shanty.

G'day MickActually own a bit of your state with a couple of properties in near you, so i'll have a place to move to. :)I don't think i'll see the water reach where i live(not that far from Cradle Mountain). I seem to remember Tassie flogging you blokes to win the Shield a couple of years back but the forms been a bit rough of late without Hilfy and Tim Paine. Any way you Queenslanders spend an hour the behind rest of us on the east coast for six months of the years Ay! :-D I think the beekeeping is pretty different down this way with our cool weather currently 10c aiming for a max of about 20 today!

Afternoon fellow Aussies, I'm John, and despite religiously reading the general forum I've only just found this new section. There's an Aussie saying about that which I can't repeat here!I'm in Melbourne with 14 hives (4 down here, 10 in Central Victoria), this is my third year. With this many hives and a very busy full time job, and no mentor, there's been plenty of times when I've been in way over my head. This forum has been an absolute lifesaver though.Cheers,John.

G'day John, welcome to the Aussie bit of the forum. Of course all Aussies are welcome but we would be lost without comment from our stateside mates on the other side of the pacific. Their bank of knowledge continues to be shared by all us here.

I understand how hard it is to be an isolated beek and although I live in Brisbane and have been caring for the girls since my duaghter's 18th birthday (she is now 35) I have no mentor and have had to learn by touch and feel until I found these forums and they have been great.. top of the line in fact. We are getting a few Aussies here now and a few from the US posting so this part of the forum is now starting to hit its straps.

I have 5 full hives and 2 nucs all of which are producing honey like it is going out of fashion.

Welcome again

Mick

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On the outer Barcoo where the churches are few, And men of religion are scanty,On a road never cross'd 'cept by folk that are lost, One Michael Magee had a shanty.

G'Day TazTiger, nice to meet you. I've had some fantastic advice from America (as recently as today) but there's something very special about local knowledge isn't there?How is the season looking for you down there? Do you have any Leatherwood around your area? Last time I was in Tassie I was very impressed with the marketing that goes into Tasmanian honey - the rest of us could learn a bit from that I think.

Mick thanks for the warm welcome, great to hear your girls are working so hard and doing so well. I've been to a couple of clubs but found it hard to find any local people willing to listen to my vast volume of stupid questions the whole time! I have found the learning curve can be pretty steep sometimes, and the people on this forum.... well I don't want to go on too much about how helpful they are, it would sound over the top. I hope to be able to get to a point where I can confidently help others. I know a couple of other local beginners who ask me for help, but I'm pretty cautious about opening my mouth too much, as there is so much more I have to learn. They must be desperate to be phoning me, poor buggers!

welcome john and taz, good to see more aussies rising to the surface, im a qld'er up here with mick, its gettn nice and warm now, but for some weird reason, my bees just aint making that much honey :( i just seem to think that maybe nothing is in flower here, i see thousands of flowers but they bees are so sloooooow....... i have 2 hives both are really strong healthy hives, but just slow producers :( anywayz, a question for you mick, how would you go about starting maybe a nuc hive in a top bar hive???? because im saving one side of the hive for the natives and the other for the italians, i have enough brood with eggs and bees to do a split (hopefully its not too late) so how would i intise them into starting a clan in the tbh?? any ideas ?

I'm only guessing here because I have never done a split with top bar hive. :?

So here goes :shock:

I would put starter strips into the top bars to give the split something to draw comb on.

I would put a division board limiting the extent of the tbh to maybe 4-5 bars and then shake nurse and field bees into the hive and make sure that the queen goes in also. If you could tie in a bar of brood I would certainly do that to try and keep queeny and the girls from absconding.

Just to be sure they dont go back to their old hive I would probably move it away until they had requeened

So how did I go.. does that sound like I dont know what I am doing :-D

Mick

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On the outer Barcoo where the churches are few, And men of religion are scanty,On a road never cross'd 'cept by folk that are lost, One Michael Magee had a shanty.

I'm in Brizvegas now but grew up a sandgroper, which as you know over there it can get as dry as a dead dingo's donger in summer, but the Fremantle Doctor gives a bit of a relief. No ankle biters yet but got a beauty of a missus, her blood's worth bottlin.Had a corker of a bike but come a gutser earlier this year. It got all busted up so I was mad as a cut snake, but I didn't lose any bark, so she'll be right.

Now to the bees - me and a mate were given 2 hives earlier this year from a top sheila, so I thought I'd give beekeeping a burl. Unfortunately after extracting our 1st batch of honey the SHB did their damage and I spit the dummy. 1 hive was completely destroyed, the other is still crook, and now only a nuc hive.Fair suck of the sav mate these SHB are a Barry Crocker, if I found the guy that introduced these to Oz he'd have to do the Harry Holt or he'd end up in a hell of a blue.I found a website from a bloke on the Goldy, he had the good oil on bottom boards with built in SHB traps, but since I'm flat out like a lizard drinking I haven't finished them yet. I have so many projects on the go at the moment that anyone would think I have a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock!

Looks like we have a good mix of bannana benders, mexicans, taswegians, crow eaters and sandgropers. Any sheepshaggers?I think we'll all benefit from getting together on this rip snorter of a forum as everyone seems to be ridgy didge.

Strewth I've had a long enough smoko yabbering on so I better shoot through and do some work, otherwise I might as well have chucked a sickie!

DARREN - PERTH , WESTERN AUSTRALIA. 2 HOURS AND TWENTY YEARS BEHIND THE REST OF THE COUNTRY AS THEY SAY. I'M A NEWBEE. 1 HIVE , 1 MONTH FROM NUC. LOTS OF JARRAH NEAR MY LAND, THEY SAY JARRAH HONEY IS THE BEST , RIGHT ??? HEAVE HO FREO!!!